On July 23rd 2004, Trolltech and the KDE Free Qt Foundation announced the signing of an updated agreement between Trolltech and the KDE Free Qt Foundation about securing the availability of Qt for development of free software. The new agreement replaces the original agreement from June 1998 by adapting it to the current situation and providing a new text which addresses the problem in a more exact and more complete way. The intention and basic content are still the same.
Read the full press release for more details.

The Foundation was formed in 1998 by Trolltech and KDE e.V., which represents KDE in
certain legal and financial matters, to provide assurances to free software
developers developing with Qt should Qt development cease.

The revised Agreement continues to honour the original purposes of the
Foundation. In particular, should Trolltech ever discontinue making regular
releases of the Qt Free Edition
for any reason - including a buyout or merger of Trolltech or the liquidation
of Trolltech - the Qt Free Edition will be released under the BSD license and
optionally under one or more other Open Source Licenses designated by the
Board of the Foundation.

The amendments are aimed at modernizing the Agreement in light of
developments occurring after the original agreement was executed - including
the release of the Qt Free Edition under the GPL and QPL in October 2000 -
and at improving the accuracy of the parties' understanding, thereby ensuring
that the Agreement continues to operate in the best interest of both parties.
The major amendments include improved precision in the definitions of the Qt
product releases, the clarification of licensing terms, and the addition of
possible termination of the Agreement under certain limited circumstances.

"Third-party software development is a crucial element of KDE's
continued future success, and the restated Agreement encourages both Open
Source and proprietary software developers and enterprises to develop with
KDE and/or Qt on the X Window System by providing a practical solution should
Trolltech be unable to continue developing Qt", explained Martin Konold,
a KDE
board member on the Foundation and a key figure in the formation of the
Foundation and execution of the original
agreement in 1998. "As with the release of Qt under the GPL
and QPL, we are very delighted that Trolltech has again demonstrated its
ongoing support of, and commitment to, Open Source software development, and
to the KDE project in particular."

"Maintaining a close connection with the Open Source community is
essential to the success of Trolltech," said Matthias Ettrich, director
of software tools development at Trolltech. "The amended Agreement
provides an excellent framework for a continued and mutually rewarding
relationship between Trolltech and the KDE Free Qt Foundation."

About Qt

Qt is a complete C++ application development framework, which includes a
class library and tools for cross-platform development and internationalization.
The Qt API and tools are consistent across all supported platforms, enabling
platform independent application development and deployment.

About Trolltech

Trolltech® is a world leader in delivering tools, components, and
libraries for C++ developers across all major operating systems. Trolltech
products constitute a leading open source application development framework
and are an integral part of the Linux desktop. Trolltech also develops
innovative UI platforms that enable key players to adopt Linux for mobile
devices.

Trolltech creates two product lines: Qt® and Qtopia®. Qt is a complete C++
application development framework, which includes a class library and tools
for cross-platform development and internationalization. Qtopia is the first
comprehensive application platform built for embedded Linux, and is used on
numerous Linux-based PDAs and mobile phones.

Trolltech is a second generation open source company with a dual licensing
business model and provides development software to some of the largest
companies in the world including Intel, IBM, Motorola, and Sharp, among
thousands more. Trolltech is headquartered in Oslo, Norway, with offices in
Brisbane, Australia, and Palo Alto, California. More about Trolltech can be
found at http://www.trolltech.com.

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About the KDE Free Qt Foundation

The KDE project, via KDE e.V., and Trolltech, the creators of Qt,
announced the formation of the KDE Free Qt Foundation in June 1998.
The purpose of the Foundation is to assure the availability of Qt for free
software development now and into the future. The Foundation is controlled by
a Board, which consists of two KDE e.V. representatives and two Trolltech
representatives; in many cases, the KDE e.V. representatives break a voting
tie. The governing document of the Foundation is available online (Page 1, Page 2).

About KDE

KDE is an independent project of hundreds of developers, translators,
artists and other professionals worldwide collaborating over the Internet to
create and freely distribute a sophisticated, customizable and stable desktop
and office environment employing a flexible, component-based,
network-transparent architecture and offering an outstanding development
platform. KDE provides a stable, mature desktop, a full, component-based
office suite (KOffice), a large set of
networking and administration tools and utilities, and an efficient,
intuitive development environment featuring the excellent IDE KDevelop. KDE is working proof that the
Open Source "Bazaar-style" software development model can yield
first-rate technologies on par with and superior to even the most complex
commercial software.

For further information, please contact:

Trolltech AS
Tonje Sund
+47 21 60 48 78
press@trolltech.com

KDE
Martin Konold
+49 7071 940353
kde-pr@kde.org

Comments

"In particular, should Trolltech ever discontinue making regular releases of the Qt Free Edition for any reason - including a buyout or merger of Trolltech or the liquidation of Trolltech - the Qt Free Edition will be released under the BSD license and optionally under one or more other Open Source Licenses designated by the Board of the Foundation."

I would hope that it would go under the BSD license or else linux would fall the way of the dodo bird. It is essential to allow proprietary development on the Linux platform.

BTW Rock on KDE and QT. All of you guys/gals are doing an excellent job....the future of linux depends as much upon you as it does on the kernel and driver developers.

"And Borland leave Kylix (QT based) development and adopt wxwindows that is LGPL and use GTK+/X11/etc/not QT in Unix"

Where do you get that from?

The only reason that i can see for Borland to make such a resource consuming switch it that KDevelop serves everyone needs more than well AND fits perfectly in the KDE desktop experience. So the only ppl that concider a 'switch' to Kylix are the GTK zealots that wont run KDevelop. That honestly the only reason that pops to mind when thinking of this weird/unconfirmed toolkit move my Borland.

"Nobody choose QT for been the better toolkit, they choose QT for been the better multiplatform toolkit, until wxwindows arrives"

wxWindows is arround for quite some time, right, so when can we call it 'arriving'? What commercial development is using wxWindows right now? If I check their website i only find some toy-apps (excusee le mot) using wxWindows.

I dont have the experience, I code on Qt only, but I hear from all directions that GUI software development with Qt is MUCH easier and straight forward than with GTK, GTK+, of M$'s API.

I have used QT/QTDesigner and GTK/Glade (c++ and python bindings) and prefer GTK/Glade mainly for Glade (and for the license IN ALL PLATFORMS), QTDesigner layout management sucks. Python/Glade/Kdevelop is an awesome development platform

A lot of people also prefer QT for the network and database libraries, qt is a framework, gtk is a graphic toolkit. QT as a graphics toolkit doesn't offer a big advantage over other toolkits. And wxwindows also have network and database libraries. And languages like python with gtk bindings have these libraries. Why depend on TrollTech?

"wxWindows is arround for quite some time, right, so when can we call it 'arriving'?" When Linux to the Desktop, this year? KDE have made a lot of advertising of QT, as a KDE user my first toolkit was QT and you? the first and the unique? GTK in C is laborious, in C++ o Python is like QT o pyQT and Glade rocks, you can copy/cut/paste widgets into hboxs/vboxs in qtdesigner not

Jesus - Glade?! I don't know why you're mentioning that for. Hopefully, in terms of GTK or Gnome development (but thanks to the excellent C# bindings work by many people totally feasible for KDE) the forms designer from SharpDevelop will get added to something like MonoDevelop.

However, nothing comes close to Qt Designer's layout management. Gone are the days when, as a developer, you worried what on Earth was going to happen when someone resized the damn form....

I have no idea how to use Designer and can't go to aKademy. Please tell me how to add a new widget to a layout. In qt layouts are like other widgets, in qtdesigner not. In qt you create a layout and add widgets, in qtdesigner you create widgets and apply a layout, i don't like this.

I love Qt, KDE and KDevelop but the layout tool in QtDesigner makes me pull my hair out (and I don't have enough left to afford that..).

e.g.

1 - I have a layout in a layout in a layout (in QTDesigner), how do I add a widget to the deepest layout without having to delete the outer layouts first and then recreate them all over again (and again, and again..)?

2 - Often the layout seems fine in preview in the designer, only for widgets to drop off the bottom in run-time.

I think I will report them, you're right. But I DO think they're a real problem. It's fine to say that you design it first, well that is good design, but designs change, especially over months and years.

I've been developing for over 20 years and haven't found layout quite so annoying before. Nevertheless, Qt is superb.

1. yes, you have to break the layouts. this is not great, but i don't find it a horrendous problem in practice as it's quick to re-add the layouts. if you do have layouts-in-layouts-in-layout-etc... you usually are misusing layouts. i find that people will often use multiple layers of layouts when spacers and gridlayouts will do just as well

I can understand that GTK/Glade on Python is a good platform for quick, multiplatform GUI app development -- especially cauz Python makes the non-GUI classes multiplatform. And with your dislikes towards QTDesigner you certainly have a point (that beeing worked on iirc).

>> Why depend on TrollTech?

For me personally it feels good to have a healthy company taking care of all the dirty low-level stuff. They provide a very good product, maintain it and bring frequent upgrades that keeps us working on a up-to-date development platform. Using Qt (KDE) apps depend on less libaries than using GTK/Glade/etc/etc/etc which keeps desktop lightweight.

I dont mind depending on Trolltech for these reasons, and if i get paid to make commercial software I wouldnt mind to pay for Trolltechs commercial Qt licence. Qt for windows is very stable (i dunno for wxWindows)

"Qt for windows is very stable (i dunno for wxWindows)". Qt for windows is not free, I like freedom of free software. And wxwindows also have support http://www.wxwindows.org/support.htm. Linux also had his unstable time

"I can understand that GTK/Glade on Python is a good platform for quick, multiplatform GUI app development -- especially cauz Python makes the non-GUI classes multiplatform. And with your dislikes towards QTDesigner you certainly have a point (that beeing worked on iirc)."

That beeing worked on? tell me more. If somebody fix qtdesigner I would use KDE (qt file dialog sucks) on Unix and Win32 in Windows, and Python for non-gui/desktop libraries

Where? "I have no idea how to use Designer and can't go ..." You know "sarcasm" word?. I have said in another comment "I have used QT/QTDesigner and GTK/Glade (c++ and python bindings) and prefer GTK/Glade mainly for Glade (and for the license IN ALL PLATFORMS), QTDesigner layout management sucks. Python/Glade/Kdevelop is an awesome development platform"

What exactly don't you like about Designer's layout management? Yeah, the last time I used glade was back in the gtk 1.2 days, but both glade and gtk seems have more flakey layout management than Qt and Designer do.

Then why do you care about win32 Qt? Windows is not free. If you really care about free software, why care about unfree operating-system? If you love free software, you will run your free software on free operating-system, and not on some proprietary monstrosity.

You forgot inkscape in the list ;)
This software is really impressive, especially in speed of development. It is similar to scribus on this point.

If only Qt were available on windows for free software! There is no windows Qt free software available on this platform.
It is a nonsense (and a shame) that people have to go for Xwindows ports to windows in order to use Qt software they love on Linux when Qt is said to be multiplatform: LyX and Scribus are two examples. This gives the impression that Qt is Linux-only while Gtk is multiplatform. Trolltech guys should think of this as a marketing advantage to have good apps (LyX and Scribus) available for Windows users, so they see how good Qt is and start develop with it.

I apologize if it sounds like I'm spouting FUD here, but is there actually a practical way to make free software written with Qt available on Windows? Weaning the Windows masses by gradually replacing their proprietary apps with tasty free alternatives is, I think, a laudable thing (Mozilla, Gimp, OpenOffice, etc), but as far as I can see the GPL'd QT Free Edition is only available for Unix/X11, Mac OS X, and embedded Linux.

The commercial license and non-commercial versions are clearly not useful; if you can't compile it and you can't sell it, it's not free software. The X11 version on Cygwin/XFree86 should work but is a bit roundabout -- huge installation dependencies. The win32 port of the X11 version sounds like it's actually got some potential, though!

"3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it,
under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of
Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable
source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections
1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your
cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete
machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be
distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
customarily used for software interchange; or,

c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer
to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is
allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you
received the program in object code or executable form with such
an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for
making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source
code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any
associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to
control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a
special exception, the source code distributed need not include
anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary
form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the
operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component
itself accompanies the executable."

A special exception may be needed to link against non-free libs that are not part of the base system the software is to run on, but you're free to do that as you're the author of the software (unless you're also using stuff written by other people, of course...). If you have a commercial license of Qt you can certainly distribute the library along with your software.

As you said, you can't do it on a GPL'd package without changing the license; this isn't always possible if ownership is spread out and not all authors can be contacted. Further, it destroys the package's free software status on that platform by making it impossible for users to recompile the app and distribute it under the same terms without getting an expensive per-seat license from Trolltech.

In comparison, a GPL'd Win32-capable toolkit would allow compiling and running a Win32 version without requirement for *any* non-free software. (Not even Windows is strictly necessary; you can cross-compile from Linux with gcc and run it in Wine or on ReactOS.)